Does Microsoft hoping to buy away Google News users

Rupert Murdoch has complained in the past about Google “stealing” News Corp’s content in public before and Murdoch’s online detractors have typically had two reactions — 1) “You’ve heard of the concept of ‘Fair Use’ right?” and 2) “You know Google makes it easy for you to block them from finding your articles, you could stop this theft pretty quickly.

News Corp might have found a new way to monetize their content, as the Financial Times (a Murdoch paper) is reporting that Microsoft is negotiating with News Corp to block its content from Google. Presumably, Microsoft is hoping to attract web surfers to use its search engine Bing by spending money to make Google’s searches make fewer hits.

Oliver Willis is right when he says a lot of people will like Google better if it were free of News Corp content. I know I would be happier if I could have gone through the past two seasons of Doctor Who without seeing The Sun report again and again that Tennant and/or Davis was about to quit the show until they finally did. (Keep saying it’s about to happen, eventually you’ll be right.)

But, if Microsoft goes through with the deal, it’ll put out a very bad message. Microsoft generally has a reputation for succeeding more by knowing how to use its resources to make up for what their product lacks in quality. After initially trying to pitch Bing as a better search engine, Microsoft would be spending money to try to make its top competitor worse. The best case scenario for Bing is new users who aren’t there because they like the service or feel loyal to it, but a feeling that Microsoft took away their alternative options. (Which is how many people feel about other Microsoft offerings.)

And, in the end, here’s the thing newspapers have to understand about the internet — somebody will always be willing to put the news out there for free because they’re willing to accept less or a profit (or, rather, a business model doesn’t involve as many expensive upper management), even if its a blogger summarizing what was just reported on the news. More likely, however, it’ll be sites that mix advocacy with original reporting like Talking Points Memo or Fire Dog Lake. Newspapers that offer something unique like the Wall Street Journal can put their content behind a subscriber wall but the papers that spent the last couple decades by cutting corners and filling their pages with the wire articles found in nearly every other paper are paying the price for not offering their readers much value.

Is this how you draw female horror fans?

The release of Jennifer’s Body started a discussion of how the audience for horror movies is largel female nowadays (with 65% of the audience for some horror movies being women) but after terrible marketing Jennifer’s Body bombed. However, after seeing Penn Badgley discuss his role on The Stepfather, I wonder if horror’s female fanbase is starting to affect the genre.

Bagley discussed having to get in shape for the movie and mentioned that he probably spends half the movie shirtless. From what I’ve seen, he spends the same amount of time shirtless in the ads for The Stepfather, as well (which, admittedly, has gotten me to watch ads for The Stepfather quite a bit).

Horror movies have already seen an influx of hotties from TV shows with young and female fanbases — think Chad Michael Murray and Jared Padalecki in House of Wax or Jensen Ackles in My Bloody Valentine — but this is the first time I’ve seen a half-naked CW stud presented so often (though Murray’s shirtless torso was fairly prominent in  ads for House of Wax, just not this prominent) as a reason to see a horror movie.

And while the producers gave an infuriating rationale for why one of the characters was changed from female to male in remaking The Stepfather, I’m wondering if the real motivation  was that it would make it easier to add a frequently-shirtless hunk into the movie that way.

If this is where the horror genre is headed, it might be a sign of how the common wisdom of Hollywood marketing (where, it was presumed, all you had to do to get a woman’s entertainment dollar is to convince her man he was interested) may finally be changing.

Cyndi, no!

For the most part, I’ve managed to avoid The Apprentice, even when the amazing Miss Alli recommended the first “celebrity” edition. However, if Cyndi Lauper ends up a part of the next season of Celebrity Appentice’s cast, I’m afraid I will feel compelled to tune in.

Please, Ms Lauper, I beg you, don’t compel me to watch Donald Trump.

Battle of the sitcom bands

In an interesting bit of synergy this week, we had two sitcoms put out a silly song on the web.

On How I Met Your Mother, Marshall’s ode to his double date with Barrobin got another joke website out out there to join the likes of Canadian Sex Acts and Slap Bet Countdown (sadly both sites seem to have disappeared).

Too bad there isn’t a longer version of Marshall’s song about accidentally killing his mother-in-law’s cat.

Meanwhile, on Modern Family Haley’s boyfriend was on the verge of winning over her parents until they heard his song “In the Moonlight”.

So long Fox Reality Channel

My first reaction to the news that the Fox Reality Channel will be shut down was snark. After all, the best thing the channel gave us in five years were reruns of The Mole and The Search for the Next Elvira while also subjecting the world to shows like Battle of the Bods, the transphobic There’s Something About Miriam and Smile… You’re Under Arrest. It’s almost as if the network were designed to make the Fox network’s reality shows look classy by comparison.

However, after some thought I realized that there was a real missed potential to the network. Instead of filling its schedule with repeats of US reality shows, the network should have aired more imports and positioned itself as the way to deal with withdrawal from your favorite reality franchise.

Can’t wait for the next Project Runway season? Then check out Project Catwalk, the UK version, until the new season begins. Let down to see America’s Next Top Model crown a winner and wrap up the cycle? Hold yourself with a season of Canada’s Next Top Model.

Imports should have made for fairly cheap programming while being something that could be promoted as original programming. Additionally, those imports would have played off of the brand identity of the US edition.

The channel’s Wikipedia entry says the show aired some international editions, but since that was the first I heard of it I’m guessing they never promoted these shows effectively. Maybe another media company could consider such a venture.

That’s Gay: No Homo

Current TV’s infoMania is easily my favorite week-in-review comedy show. It’s easily one of the smartest shows in the genre, avoiding the easy snark for sharper, more cutting insight. Some of that comes from the variety of voices behind infoMania, Sarah Haskins has been dropping some feminist humor since the show began and Bryan Safi has similarly tacked gay issues with humor with his “That’s Gay” segment.

In the latest “That’s Gay” Safi takes on “no homo” and breaks down the ridiculousness of it all.

Is The Jay Leno Show turning out to be an albatross for NBC?

Jeff Zucker has a bit of a reputation for choosing profitability that comes with a heavy long-term price and The Jay Leno Show may be the latest example. While the show is indeed making more money than NBC’s previous 10PM dramas, the bigger picture isn’t encouraging. NBC’s average rating at 10 PM is down by 43%, The Tonight Show is down 23% and, most troubling, local news (on NBC stations, though it’s probably safe to presume there’s something similar happening on affiliates) have also seen audiences shrink by 16%. NBC may be more profitable in the time slot, but its dragging down the shows that follow it.

The shrinking audience for the local news is the most troubling data point because, as Mark Evanier explains, that’s valuable to affiliate and if affiliates decide to bump Leno (most likely, as Evanier suggests, to air an early news show with Leno airing after prime time) there could be a domino effect that hurts the entire late night line up.

Meanwhile, the few hits NBC had at 10 PM — namely, Law & Order: SVU and Dateline — are facing troubles without the 10 PM slot. In its new time slot L&O is struggling against the stronger Criminal Minds. ABC’s newsmagazine 20/20, meanwhile, is once again winning its time slot now that its facing Leno and not Dateline.

Then again, the alternative would have been finding strong series that could be hits at 10PM and history shows it was unlikely that would happen at NBC.

How do you update a Britcom from 1978?

Well, here are two shows in development that I wasn’t expecting. For one, the BBC has announced they’re looking at developing an Butterflies for American audiences, a Britcom that ran from 1978 to 1983 and has been a PBS mainstay.

Butterflies — which followed a housewife’s midlife crisis as her sons became slackers in adulthood and debated an affair with an ex-boyfriend — certainly captured the zeitgeist of the time but can it be relevant 30 years later? The series largely dealt with the idea that the concept of marriage had changed and that women were no longer marrying for the same reason that Ria, Butterflies‘ heroine, did. Ria’s husband Ben was a good provider but distant emotionally and the arrival of her ex-boyfriend, Leonard, made her realize her marriage lacked romance.

How do you update such a theme in an era of shows like Weeds, Gilmore Girls or 30 Rock with heroines whose problems make Ria look like a quaint relic? You could say that at the core of Butterflies is the story of a woman contemplating adultery and that’s a story that hasn’t been told sensitively (instead of being played for sensationalism) in a while, but updating Butterflies sounds as daunting as taking Absolutely Fabulous out of the 90s and into the 21st century.

At the least, I’m looking forward to hearing the show’s theme song “Love is Like a Butterfly” (performed by Dolly Parton below) updated.

There’s a new Clock to Beat

Fox has picked up the rights to adapt UK game show The Cube which, from what I’ve seen could be described as Beat the Clock prettied up with modern production styles. I’d be excited about the possibilities if Fox’s recent game shows managed to hold my attention for more than two episodes. Then again, it’s not like Fox’s competitors have managed to make any gameshows I’ve liked, either. (Though the frequent gratuitous beefcake did get me to watch NBC’s Identity.)

FlashForward: won’t get lost?

My big worry about ABC’s newest sci-fi show, FlashForward, was that this would turn into Lost — a poorly-paced mythology show better at asking questions than giving satisfying answers.  However, according to series producers that’s not a danger. David Goyer and Marc Guggenheim told SFX Magazine that they have a detailed outline for seven seasons that will tell the story.

Hopefully, this means FlashForward won’t fall into the traps that befell Lost, which started to fall apart midway through the first season and we got several episodes in a row where the Lostaways had the same debate about the hatch door. Of course, the real challenge will come when ABC gets a hold of focus group reports and directs Goyer and Guggenheim to ensure whichever character tests highest becomes overexposed instantly.